Have You Met The Risen Jesus? (Easter)

The Easter story is about being sure of the Resurrection and meeting the risen Jesus. This is the point where Jesus becomes a real person to a believer. This is the point where each of us goes from being what we might call a “cultural Christian” to a 'serious believer'. Everyone who meets the risen Jesus is changed - even transformed. Their faith goes from being a philosophy of life to being a daily personal relationship with the risen Jesus. They go from a set of intellectual beliefs to “my Faith” and my hope for the future. For many people this is a dramatic encounter like that of Mary. For others it may be more gradual. The important thing is to personally meet the risen Jesus.

1. The Risen Jesus gives us resurrection life

Church’s Mission is to Proclaim Healing & Freedom (Epiphany 3)

The story of Jesus reading the Isaiah Prophecy in the Synagogue and telling the people it was being fulfilled in their sight must have been a dramatic moment. Not only was Jesus claiming to be the long promised Messiah; He was re-defining the mission of the Messiah as preaching and proclaiming the love of God in healing and freeing His people. Those people, like us, were in deep spiritual darkness. They did not clearly know what God wanted. They did not all know how much God loved them. They did not all know how close a spiritual relationship God wanted to have with them. They did not understand the spiritual forces of evil that were deceiving them, blinding them and preventing them from coming into a relationship of joy with their God.

1. We are anointed to proclaim Good News of healing and freedom

People are starving for a relationship with God. Most people do not really know how to pray or what to expect. They are surrounded by conflicting and usually wrong information about what God wants. What they need is strong, authoritative preaching of the truth.

Religious People Are Not Always Spiritual People

Jesus is teaching us the difference between Religious people and Spiritual people. Religious people are like the Pharisees who were so prideful of keeping the Law, they had no time or energy left to love God, the Law giver. The Readings warn us to seek a personal love relationship with God (righteousness); over perfect religious practice.

1. Song of Songs (2.8-13) is an erotic love poem

This at first may seem out of place in the Bible – particularly if you had a female professor of Old Testament explain that the references to animals, mountains, fruits and lily pads are interpreted as parts of the male and female anatomy. We recoil in horror because we are so ‘head focussed’ instead of ‘heart focussed’. This is of course the point. God is all knowing - and not interested in an intellectual relationship with us. What God wants is a passionate, emotional love relationship.

Christians are Naturally Supernatural (Response to Cursillo talk April 9)

We have all heard of things happening in peoples lives which can not be explained by nature - what happens naturally, or at least most of the time. Miracles and statistically unlikely events lead to questions about God.

• Some people dismiss miracles as luck
• Others assume God may have acted but are confused about their faith
• Serious Christians are drawn deeper into their faith

1. Personal experience deepens our faith

“Wholeness through Christ” Healing Ministry Model

(from a workshop presented to Diocese of Windward Islands Clergy, 2014)

 

The Good News of the healing ministry in the Christian Church is that when people come for healing, the Holy Spirit will help us work with them to discern the root cause in their sin or some form of inherited sin-guilt or curse, break the power of the sin through repentance, confession and absolution and build them up spiritually through the infilling of the Holy Spirit. The Wholeness Through Christ Healing Model helps us understand this ministry by defining the goals of Christian healing ministry as:

·         Sins forgiven
·         Wounds healed
·         Evil spirits cast out
·         Bondages broken